Chapter LXXI
LXXI
CATEN IS COVERED BY AN ETHEREAL, RAY-STREAKED smoky haze, thick winter clouds bleeding from gold to orange as the sun peeks through and touches the horizon.
There are few people on the street between my concealed rooftop vantage and South Caten Prison.
Few people out at all, as far as I can tell.
Uneasiness coats the city, chokes its streets and stills its usual conversations.
Not everyone has been told about the attack coming tonight—in fact, its knowledge has been kept relatively contained—but it’s in the air anyway.
A prescient, ugly mood as the sun burns through smoke and the mutters of the hungry drift upward. Surreal, how quickly this place has eaten itself alive.
I shift my gaze once again back to the prison across the way.
Not the one Lanistia was held in last time, but it will inevitably be much the same layout.
On the surface it looks identical, just a squat building with one barred window to view anyone arriving.
A slot for papers and an impossibly thick stone door, which is meant to open only with a Will key or seal from Quartus Kanifer. No one posted outside.
Five men emerged ten minutes ago, and they admitted only two replacements. Probably the only guards, this evening. Not that they should have reason for more. Catenan prisons are designed to hold off an army, regardless of their staff.
“You look comfortable.” Aequa grins as I start at her voice by my ear, then lies prone on the rooftop next to me, shoulder to shoulder. “Hail, Vis. Nice and alert for tonight, I see.”
“I was focusing,” I grumble, though I allow a small smile of greeting in her direction.
“Been here long?”
“Faustus kept me occupied for about an hour. Figured it was safer to disappear earlier rather than later, before I got called in to do something I couldn’t get out of.” Her smirk widens as I roll my eyes. “So, yes. Long.”
“No Diago?”
I shake my head. I considered it. But if something goes wrong, if we’re caught, I can’t have him deciding to kill someone from Religion to protect us.
That would turn a relatively minor incident—if disastrous for Aequa and me—into something far more destructive.
“Domus Telimus is along our way to the docks. We’ll pick him up after this. ”
She gives a cheery nod to my confident assumption of success here. “Guards?”
“Five out, two in. It should be all they need for tonight.”
Her upbeat demeanour finally falters at that, and she nods again, this time grimly. There may be only two people in there, but those two are doubtless prepared for some bloody work.
“We should go in soon, then,” she observes quietly.
I eye the sun dipping below the buildings. “One of us should check the street before we do. Given what they’re planning, there’s a chance they have someone extra on watch. You want to go, or me?”
She leans playfully against my shoulder, indicating me. “I’ll let you stretch your legs before the fun starts.”
I get to my feet, arrange my somewhat dishevelled toga and stare at her. “Gods’ graves. You’re actually looking forward to this, aren’t you?”
She rolls onto her side, lounging as she gazes up at me. “A prison break with the great Catenicus? Rotting gods, yes. Eidhin is going to be so jealous, and I am going to bring it up constantly.”
I cough a soft laugh, nudge her in mock reproval with my foot, and head down the stairs.
The street is expectedly empty and quiet; it takes only a few minutes and a cursory tour to determine that no unwanted surprises are lurking.
I take the stairs back up two at a time.
Energised. I’ve had a fresh dose of Kadmos’s tea, and don’t even feel my various injuries.
For all the horrors I know are coming, I have a plan.
A narrow path through the darkness ahead.
I’m still thinking, and almost to the top again, when I hear the voices.
“It’s just me.” Aequa, and though she’s doing her best to hide it, she’s uneasy. She says it loudly, though. Clearly a warning. “I came to do Vis a favour and watch the prison. He’s not here.”
“Watch? I don’t believe you.” A familiar voice. Male. “And for your sake, let us hope he comes to find you soon.” I take a second to place it, heart sinking when I do.
Tertius Decimus.
I pause there on the stairs, frozen in place. For all his lack of aggression toward me at meetings, Iro’s father is no supporter of mine and won’t hesitate to try and stop me from freeing Lanistia. Is that why he’s here?
“Release me, please, Tertius.” Aequa is keeping remarkably calm, but there’s something more to her voice now. “You’ve no authority to detain me. I’m not doing anything—”
She cuts off with a low, pained cry, and my decision is made.
“Tertius Decimus.” I step up onto the roof and immediately prepare myself to imbue, though it will be pointless against the man.
Decimus’s eyes are completely black and he is gripping Aequa’s shoulder with evident force.
She’s keeping still, but I can see the discomfort in her eyes as she gives me a reproving look.
Thinks I should have stayed hidden, clearly. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“Telimus.” Decimus’s smile broadens to something disconcerting and wholly false. A gleam in his dead eyes. “I’m so glad you’re here. I wanted to make sure you understand this.”
“Understand what, sir?” I keep my unease in check and take a mildly confused, acquiescent tone. Decimus is on edge. There’s no benefit to angering him.
“Loss.” His manic grin fades until he’s just staring at me. Aequa still held in his iron grip. “Helplessness and loss.”
My heart clenches. He knows why I’m here. He’s planning to stop me.
“Vis already understands those things, Tertius. Truly.” Aequa, speaking up quietly before I can find a response. “His parents were murdered when he was young. His friend died in his arms at the Iudicium. He was at the naumachia when—”
“The naumachia.” Decimus cuts her off and Aequa’s wince shows she sees the mistake, though I would have made the same one.
“You were both there, weren’t you? And you saved her while thousands died.
While my daughter died. Trapped in there like an animal.
” He shakes Aequa as he says “her,” though his dark eyes never leave mine.
She’s a Quintus, and self-imbuing, but still powerless to stop the effortlessly violent motion.
“And now here you both are again. Here to rescue your … what? Former tutor? Though she is our enemy. Prioritising the personal over the many yet again.”
I see it then. Something in the way he spits it, sending a genuine chill down my spine. I see all of the grief and hatred he’s been keeping hidden as we meet, day after day.
Chained in the dark, as my mother once described it.
“Lanistia’s my friend, Tertius. She’s my friend and of no tactical importance, and if she’s in a Sapper, they’re going to kill her just in case she’s ceding to the wrong person.
” Vek. Even if he wasn’t holding Aequa so threateningly, I cannot think of a way I can get past him, let alone beat him.
If he imbues something, then maybe I can get to it.
Adopt his own power and use it against him.
But he’s self-imbuing. I confirmed months ago that I can’t take Will directly from other people, and the weapons I have at my disposal—the metal triangles sitting beneath my tunic—will do little more than dent themselves against him, and then give me away in the process.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t act sooner at the naumachia. I’m sorry Iro got injured—”
“Iro is dead.” Decimus’s lifeless voice cuts through anything else I might have said.
Stills me to hollow silence. “He died three days ago. The Vitaerium wasn’t enough.
He just couldn’t breathe anymore.” Fist clenching and unclenching.
The words coming out so calm, and yet every inch of the man screams of pain and violence.
“They knew it was coming. But I couldn’t go to him.
I couldn’t be there to say goodbye because I. Had. Responsibilities.”
He takes me in. Shifts his grip so that his hand rests on Aequa’s head. “At least I am giving you the chance to say goodbye, Telimus.”
“What?” I freeze, hold up my hand as I see the sudden panic on Aequa’s face.
She beats at him, tries to twist away but his grasp on her head is firm.
No. This is a test. A means of extracting more from me.
“Whatever you want from me, Tertius. Anything you want. Just let me know.” Test or not, I won’t risk it.
“I want my children back,” says Decimus softly. “Or in lieu of that, I want you to say goodbye.”
“It’s alright, Vis.” Aequa’s shaking. Stopped struggling, I think because it was hurting her as much as getting nowhere. But somehow, she still forces a smile at me. “It’s alright. Whatever happens, neither of us can—”
Decimus tightens his grip.
Aequa’s head caves in.
I just stand there. Limbs weak, heart stopped, breath gone.
There is the cracking of bone and then an ugly squelching.
This cannot be happening. My friend’s face is crumpled between his fingers.
Her dark, straight hair molten with crimson in the dying light of the day.
Decimus releases her. Flicks blood and brain off his hand as her body crumples to the ground, watching me the entire time.
A wordless cry. I am flying at him. All of my shock and rage a thin tunnel, unable to even process what I am doing as I am doing it.
I hit him across the face, and he smiles at my pain as my fist near shatters in its meeting the immovable object.
I try to force him backward over the edge, forgetting that it will take far more than twenty or so feet to kill him.
He doesn’t budge. My throbbing hand around his throat. He doesn’t even blink.